Beidou launches navigation data for Asia-Pacific region

The Beidou satellite navigation network began offering positioning data yesterday for the Asia-Pacific region - a milestone in Beijing's bid to challenge the US-controlled Global Positioning System (GPS).

The move comes exactly a year after authorities provided the first satellite location information to civilian users on the mainland using the second-generation Beidou Navigation System (BDS).

Expanding into the Asia-Pacific region - from Afghanistan to the Western Pacific and Mongolia to northern Australia - puts the system on track to claim 15 to 20 per cent of the GPS-dominated domestic market by 2015, said Ran Chengqi , a BDS spokesman and director of the China Satellite Navigation Office.

Beijing aims to have BDS serve 70 to 80 per cent of the domestic market by 2020, when it is expected to become China's first global navigation system.

An early version has been used by traffic control systems in more than 100,000 vehicles in nine provinces and cities.

"We are stepping up efforts to turn BDS into an international system, which will be commonly used by civil aviation, maritime and mobile communication organisations," Ran said.